Five Chinese military aircraft including two bombers entered the Korean Air Defense Identification Zone (KADIZ) without prior notification Monday, causing South Korea to dispatch its fighter jets.
The Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said the Air Force's Master Control and Reporting Center detected two H-6 bombers, two J-11 fighter jets and one TU-154 reconnaissance plane entered the KADIZ from southwest of Ieodo at 10:10 a.m.
The flight into the KADIZ came just two days after President Moon Jae-in returned home from his four-day state visit to China during which time he met with Chinese President Xi Jinping and other leaders to discuss issues related to the deployment of the U.S. Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system and other challenges.
The JCS said Seoul countered by sending fighter jets including F-15Ks to the area, noting that the Chinese aircraft also flew into the Japanese Air Defense Identification Zone (JADIZ).
The aircraft then left the KADIZ and flew back toward China, the JCS added.
"South Korea's fighter jets that scrambled to the area indentified the types of the Chinese military aircraft," a JCS official said, asking not to be named. "Our fighter jets took normal tactical measures until the Chinese planes left."
In response to the Air Force's warning messages through a hotline, Beijing said that the flight was part of a routine exercise and that it had no intention of infringing South Korea's territorial airspace, the official said.
An air defense identification zone is airspace over land or water that a country establishes to identify and control possibly hostile aircraft in the interests of national security. The concept of an ADIZ is different from that of territorial airspace, and is not defined in any international treaty. This raises the possibility of accidental clashes between countries.
This is the second time for Chinese military aircraft to enter the KADIZ this year after 10 intruded Jan. 9.
Situated about 149 kilometers southwest of Jeju Island, Ieodo is an area where the air defense zones of Korea, China and Japan overlap.
In November 2013, China unilaterally expanded its own zone to cover the airspace over Ieodo and other islands off the southern coast of the Korean Peninsula.
In December of the same year, Korea announced an expansion of the KADIZ to counter the Chinese move, which also included airspace over Ieodo and the southern islands of Marado and Hongdo.
Chinese military aircraft often enter the KADIZ as well as the JADIZ, which observers see as an apparent show of force against neighboring countries amid its territorial dispute with Japan in the South China Sea as well as developments in military cooperation between Seoul, Tokyo and Washington.
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http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/nation/2017/12/205_241092.html